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Google Employees Plan Walkout to Protest Company's Handling of Sexual Misconduct

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:07PM   
from the integrity-and-ethics-are-more-than-just-words dept.

takyon writes:

Google employees will walk out on Thursday to protest company's

Days after a New York Times investigation revealed Google gave Android creator Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package despite multiple relationships with other Google staffers and accusations of sexual misconduct, some 200 employees at the search giant are planning a walkout, per BuzzFeed News.

We've reached out to Google for comment.

The walkout, or "women's walk," as it's been referred to in internal company forums, is planned for Thursday.

Following the NYT report, Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai and its vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton co-signed a company memo admitting that 48 people had been terminated at the company for sexual harassment in the past two years, 13 of which held a senior management position or higher. None of them, according to the memo, received an exit package.

[...] Rubin left Google in 2014 after an internal investigation found accusations of sexual misconduct against him to be credible. The details of his exit, however, were never disclosed. It wasn't until The Information published its own bombshell report on Rubin's wrongdoings last fall that details of his history of sexual harassment began to emerge. In the wake of The Information's story, Rubin took a leave of absence from Essential to "deal with personal matters."

See also: Google is 'bold and inspired' for coming clean about its 'Game of Thrones' culture of sex and power

Update: Alphabet exec Rich DeVaul resigns after harassment allegation

Just days after a New York Times report dug into sexual misconduct by executives within Google and its parent company Alphabet, one of the men named has resigned. Rich DeVaul was a director of Alphabet's X research division (formerly known as Google X), and cofounded Project Loon. As first reported by Axios, DeVaul resigned, and did not receive an exit package.

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Original Submission

• Re:Only proper response (Score: 3, Touché) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:43PM

  by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:43PM (#756555)

  * DeVaul's story is that he met a woman at Burning Man and made a sexual advance, as is _normal_ of humans. Presumably this was accompanied by talk of who he was, where he worked, the fact that he held a director position at this company. Standard small-talk of successful humans in wooing another human. He _requested_ a sexual advance, and was turned down; he then took a lesser approach which still suggested interest, not simply walking away -> if at first you don't succeed, giving up is what the weak do.

  The woman goes, 'oh, hey -- a director at Google was interested in me! We talked a lot, we do similar things, and he complemented my skills!' - likely this was part of the smalltalk/wooing above. The woman, having rejected the man, to apply for work at Google, using this sexually-charged event, for a similar role as they'd talked about - a role that it was stated is managed by said director. Other employees didn't feel great with the candidate, but you don't end the day early, you still have a candidate to interview. So the interview took place, the director walked in and goes, "Oh -- her." he can't leave the interview at that point, that would be most insulting. So the interview continues, having started after other interviewers were uncomfortable with the candidate's abilities anyway. It's a formality. Something that's on the agenda for the day.

  When the candidate is formally rejected after the day is out and the discussions had taken place, the candidate cries foul over an event that happened off company time, off company property, at an event not sponsored by or in any way related to the company. The director, then, loses his job.

  No.

  In any well-run, competently run organization, you prevent/manage fraternization between people with hiring/firing/promotion authority.

  If he was a military general running a boot camp and asked one of the recruits under his command

  Yeah okay, that would be relevant if it happened after the woman was hired at the company.

  --
  "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Touché=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Touché' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3